


Don't Wait

by UnchartedCloud



Series: A Soft Epilogue [1]
Category: Carmilla (Web Series)
Genre: F/F, transmedia
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-09
Updated: 2015-08-09
Packaged: 2018-04-13 17:31:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,114
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4530822
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/UnchartedCloud/pseuds/UnchartedCloud
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Two times Carmilla and Laura miss the door they never locked. Based on Laura’s, Carmilla’s, and LaFontaine’s canon transmedia, prior to the release of Season 2. Who's up for some fluff in a hayloft?</p>
            </blockquote>





	Don't Wait

**Author's Note:**

> This fic was originally posted on my tumblr, UnchartedCloud.tumblr.com, on May 31, 2015. Though it was written in celebration of the #Carmillapocalypse prior to the second season's start, I thought it'd be nice to have some fluff amidst all the angst. The whole scenario is based, as the synopsis mentions, on the canon transmedia for the series, beginning individually with Laura's (https://twitter.com/Laura2theLetter/status/600798370937069568), Carmilla's (https://twitter.com/HeyCarmilla/status/600707904514174978), and LaFontaine's (https://twitter.com/LaFilphormes/status/600727135355998208) tweets. Cheers to the Carmilla crew for making such enjoyable transmedia!

_You’ve got a look in your eyes -_

_I knew you in a past life._  
_One glance and the **avalanche** drops,_  
_One look and my heartbeat **stops**._

> _\- Avalanche, Walk the Moon_

* * *

Sometimes, you wish you’d been born in the era of personified phenomena. At least then you could growl about how badly you wanted to hurt the weather and people would actually take you seriously. **  
**

The barn door puts up a fight, and you have to shove your shoulder into it to get it to close against the wind. Ginger Twin One adds their strength to the contest, and part of you wants to sneer about how  _adorable_  it is that they think they’re helping. But the rest of you is freezing, so you don’t.

When at last the wind is sealed outside, you puff out a breath and turn to face the others. You’re a sad, pathetic looking bunch. Everyone looks like they’ve been hand-dipped in a vat of lumpy, frozen frosting, held up by their right arms. Your left sides all faced the wind on the hike up, and between the snow being driven against you and the two and a half feet already on the ground, all but about one fourth of your right sides look like Abominable Snowpeople.

“H-H-Human t-t-t-test-ting complete,” chatters Ginger Twin One as they clap the snow off their shoulders beside you. “Results c-conclusive. Human icicles p-possible.”

This is when Ginger Twin Two swoops in and starts clucking out sympathetic noises, helping to dislodge snow from her counterpart’s hair. You roll your eyes and start casting about for your girlfriend. You swear, you only put her down a second ago–

Her snow-covered coat lies on the ground nearby, and you catch the heel of a snow-covered boot disappearing up a ladder and into a hole in the ceiling. “Laura,” you call, a frown crumpling your brow as you move to follow.

“I’m just looking!” she calls back, but you’re already on the ladder. You haul yourself over the lip of the opening and, arms wrapped around the top of the ladder, elbows on the floor of the second level, you raise your eyebrow at her back.

“If you’re looking for hot cocoa, you have a better chance of sticking close to Julia Childs down there,” you say, and you can almost see the ‘harrumph’ of her shoulders in the dim light. A snap of a match later, and her silhouette is backlit by a flare of yellow light.

“We have no idea who owns this barn,” she says as she turns to you. The source of the light is an old lantern she holds in her hands, likely taken from the nail in the post she’s standing beside. “For all we know there could be more angry villagers, or witches, or–”

“Vampires?” You smirk as you finish your climb, coming to your feet with movements as graceful and detached as ever. Her nose squinches as you approach.

“Or  _spiders_ ,” she finishes grumpily, and you chuckle.

“There’s nothing here, cupcake,” you assure her. If there was anything living within a twenty yard radius, you’d have eaten it by now.

Once you’re in her space you catch the lantern’s handle from her and hang it back up on the peg, from whence it promptly casts light across a hay-stuffed - but otherwise empty - loft. Its ceilings are sloped and relatively low, but the hay is un-baled and sits in big, hulking piles near the walls. Laura is already testing one of them, and as you turn to watch she flops into it like a pile of autumn leaves and sighs.

“I am soooooo glad to be out of that storm,” she tells the ceiling, and you allow yourself another small grin. There’s snow melting in her hair and off her boots, and her cheeks are still pink from the wind. Life-threatening conditions aside, snow suits her. You think absently that maybe, once all of this passes over, you might abscond with her to…well, the Alps were certainly out of the question, seeing as after this clusterfuck you’ll never want to see them again. Would Antarctica be too extreme? Maybe Alaska.

Whatever. You’ll figure that out later.

For now you say, “And here I was starting to think you  _enjoyed_  running for your life in the mountains,” and flop into the hay beside her. She gives you another too-cute-to-be-grumpy look as you begin to brush snow out of her hair.

“Might I remind you that we wouldn’t still be running if you hadn’t tried to make a juice box out of the mayor?” she grumbles at you, and you roll your eyes.

“I’ve already apologized. I honestly didn’t think they’d react so badly.”

“Yeah, well.” She sighs, and lifts her hands to her mouth to blow breath into them. “I’m sorry, I’m just. Cold.”

You sigh sympathetically, fingers laying her hair gently over her shoulder…and then your heart stops. Metaphorically, of course, but still.

“Jesus, Laura, your  _hands_ ,” you say, and immediately shift onto your knees in front of her and take them between yours. Her fingers are red and raw looking, and as you touch them she winces. They’re ice cold against your palms.

“I lost my mittens while we were being chased,” she explains, somewhat guiltily, and doesn’t meet your eyes.

“So they’ve just been exposed this whole time??” You think of how her arms had been situated around your shoulders when you carried her, how - unlike yours, which could take shelter in your sleeves and against her thighs - her hands must have been bare to the wind. You cup them together in your hands and bring them to your lips. You spend the next several seconds intermittently blowing into the gap between them and rubbing feeling back into her fingertips.

“You were already struggling in the storm, and I didn’t want to hold us up by making you stop so I could readjust,” she answers, and now she’s watching you. “Any wasted time out there could’ve frozen us solid.”

“You put yourself in danger, Laura,” you say against her skin, but you can’t find it in you to be upset. Beneath the cold she still smells like her, and it’s the warmest thing you’ve ever known.

She must recognize this, because when the rubbing gives way to you just pressing her hands together between yours, she gently extricates one and lifts it to carefully - oh so carefully - touch your cheek. It’s still strange to you to think how recently it was that you kissed her for the first time, and how little time to acclimate to contact with each other you both have had. She still seems nervous about it; certainly you hear her heartrate go up a tick.

“I’ll be okay, Carm,” she says with a smile, and the fact that her fingertips don’t shock like ice against your cheek is, you suppose, somewhat reassuring. “We’re out of the blizzard, and in a cozy little hayloft. I’ll be fine.”

“It’s still cold in here,” you say, but the protest is fairly moot at this point. You haven’t been able to look away from her since the second she moved her hand. “And we need to get you warm.”

Something changes then - in her expression, in the atmosphere - and a smile you have never seen before takes up residence on her lips. Foreign to you but absolutely natural on her, it sends a shiver up your spine. “I can think of a few ways we can manage that.”

She can’t be – is she  _really–?_

So maybe making out in a hayloft wasn’t something you ever planned on doing again, but when she’s looking at you like that…well, who are you to complain?

You’re just leaning forward when there’s a commotion behind you, and you hear boots clattering on the ladder.

“Ooh, yeah - that looks like first degree frostbite.”

You don’t turn around. You just grit your teeth with a click, close your eyes, and will yourself to stay still as  _every cell in your body SCREAMS_  for a ginger’s snapped neck.

Heh. Ginger-snap. You’ll have to save that one for later.

“LaF! We - yeah, we were just talking about that,” Laura says, and your eyes lift to hers. She must see the murder in them because she gives you an apologetic look - one that is, it turns out, ultimately unnecessary, as the pretty blush on her cheeks and the touch of her hands on yours have already worked to calm you down. Instead of breathing fire you sigh out your nose, then flop back into the hay beside Laura. Sure enough, Wonder Twin One is dragging themselves up through the hole in the floor in the meantime.

“You should check your toes, too,” they say, sliding onto their knees on the floor and sitting back against the wall. “Most of your body’s glomus bodies are in your fingers and toes, so vasoconstriction happens almost immediately, and if you leave the digit for too long without blood–”

“We know what frostbite is, Bill Nye,” you snap, and LaFontaine looks almost affronted by your interruption. The reaction should really be more amusing than it is, you know, but a part of you still wants to rip out their throat. “Where’s the other half of the Dynamic Duo? Shouldn’t you be making sure your sidekick isn’t having a conniption somewhere?”

“What, Perry? She’s–”

“Here!” says a voice from the hole, and a moment later a mane of red curls appears over its edge. Ginger Twin Two manages to lift herself into the hayloft without dropping the plastic bag she’s carrying in one hand. “I was just getting some supplies together. Blizzard or no, we’ll still need to eat something to make sure we have strength for tomorrow.”

No. No. Nononononono  _no_  this was  _not_  what you  _meant_  when you asked where she was. There was supposed to be one fewer ginger in your hayloft, not one more!

As you stiffen in your attempt to keep your rising temper at bay, Laura’s hand drops to yours and gives it a squeeze. You shoot her a look to ensure that she knows exactly how much effort it’s costing you to resist turning both of her friends into Jackson Pollock reprints. You’re all for getting along with them for the sake of brownie points with her, but this? This is ridiculous.

“Uh, speaking of blizzard, though.” Bill Nye is still talking. Why is Bill Nye still talking? You shoot them a glare, but they’re too busy eying the lantern Laura lit. “We should probably find a heat source if we don’t want to wake up covered in hoarfrost. I was thinking, this hay looks pretty dry–”

“Absolutely not!” Julia Childs looks up from…whatever it is she has inside her bag to give her Wonder Twin the Mother of All Stern Looks. The original Julia Childs could’ve taken notes, you think. “Just look at this place! If you set one strand of hay on fire in this loft, the whole of it will be gone in minutes!”

“Okay, alright, jeeze.” Wonder Twin One holds up their hands as though to placate the Mother Hen, who clucks apologetically and hands them something from the bag. It’s not until it’s in LaFontaine’s hand that you can see it’s a Santa-shaped chocolate bar. Laura’s strangled cry of excitement is so pathetic you want to kiss her forehead; the girl’s gone days without so much as a bite of junk food.

“Where did you  _get_  that??”

“I managed to take a few things from that diner before we left,” Mother Hen answers with a demure smile. She hands an identical bar to Laura, and is in the midst of carefully - lest she get her fingers bitten off - offering one to you when she adds, “It won’t do much to fill our bellies, but it will keep our blood sugar up. Oh! That reminds me.”

The chocolate is barely within your grasp before she releases it and returns to the ladder. “LaFontaine? Will you help me with something?”

Bill offers their assent - because _that’s_  a complete shocker - and they both disappear down the ladder. As the sound of their boots fade, you turn to Laura.

“As riveting as that interruption was…” you start, but you give up on continuing almost immediately after. Laura is chin-deep in chocolate, and she doesn’t give up on her gnawing when she looks up at you. She just moves her eyes, like a puppy worrying at a steak bone. You roll your eyes and lift your portion of chocolate, giving it a hateful look. It wouldn’t make up for the absence of blood in your diet, but it’s better than nothing.

That’s when Laura giggles and leans over, planting a quick, chocolate-sweetened kiss on your mouth. You’re so surprised by the kiss that she’s gone again before you’ve even registered its presence.

“I bet you’re missing our dorm right now,” she teases, and you give her a sly look. “What with its door…and its lock…”

“You know, this barn has two doors, and they both lock,” you say, leaning close to her. She takes this as a joke and laughs, even though you would, one-hundred percent, throw both her friends into the snow at a moment’s notice.

“Come on, Carm,” she says, and nudges your shoulder with hers. “It’ll be fun! Just think of it as a slumber party.”

You’ve drawn close to her ear when you murmur, in your best seduction voice, “That’s not the kind of slumber party I had in mind.”

There are boots on the ladder again, but the  _fierce_  blush that has taken hold of Laura’s face is enough to mollify you. You flop back into the hay with a victorious little smirk and take a chunk out of Santa’s head as Tweedle “Gee!” and Tweedle Mum reappear.

“WAFFLES!” the former all but crows to the rafters, and they push a plastic bag-turned-plate up onto the floor before clambering up themselves. The latter is immediately behind them, and manages the ascent with much more grace despite refusing to put her own bag down. You raise an impressed eyebrow, at first for the coordination, then for the ability of Betty Crocker to apparently make waffles out of whatever the hell was lying around in the barn. Laura’s astonishment was much less subtle.

“Waffles?” she repeats, her mouth dropping open. You eye her bottom lip, and it’s all you can do not to lean over and catch it between your teeth. “I - Perry, I know you’re - you know, _Perry_ , but - this is impressive, even for you!”

Betty Crocker offers another demure smile. “They aren’t waffles, exactly - I couldn’t find an iron, so the wells aren’t very deep–”

“They’re waffles, Pear,” Tweedle “Gee!” says, scooting closer to Laura’s side of your haystack. She tears one in half and offers half to the other redhead. “And they smell amazing.”

Laura is given the other waffle, which she tears in half as well and offers to you. You accept it without a word - at first - and examine it, turning it over between your hands.

“Are you  _sure_  she’s not another Christmas witch?” you say, because needling these two never gets old. “I mean, we’ve been here for - what - all of  _ten_ minutes? In a  _barn_? Where did you even– _ow,_  damn it!”

Laura has elbowed you hard in the arm, and vampiric constitution or not her elbow is bony as all hell. So you shut up and rub the bruised spot while shooting her a glare. It’s only returned to you three fold. “The waffles are great, Perry,” she says, looking away from you to smile at Tweedle Mum. “They’re everything we needed right now.”

The next hour is spent eating, huddling for warmth, and talking. Well, they’re all talking - you’re brooding next to your girlfriend. While they chatter inanely about who the hell knows what, you’re busy tabulating all the things you and Laura could be doing at that moment if whoever built this stupid barn had thought to install a hatch on the hayloft.

But as the night wears on, the temperature drops. You know you aren’t the only one to feel it; Laura had taken to wandering the hayloft a little while ago - managing to find a pitchfork, some rope, and a weird glass jar in the process - but the cold has driven her back to the little huddle of warmth you and the Ginger Twins have made in the meantime. She’s settled herself against your side, and now you feel her shiver against your ribs. Your arm around her shoulders gives a squeeze, and you think your worry must be visible on your face because Bill Nye stands and says, “We need a fire. If not the hay, then something else.”

Perry has been rubbing her arms for a while now, and so she offers no protest. “Maybe we can find some firewood outside,” she says, and stands as well. “It sounds like the wind has died down, at least.”

“Good, great,” you say sourly, “Do me a favor and get lost while you’re out there, yeah?”

“ _Carmilla_ ,” Laura hisses at you, and in a normal-volumed voice says to the Wonder Twins, “Don’t go far, okay? And don’t be gone long. Even without the wind, it has to be well into the negatives out there.”

Tweedle “Gee!” and Tweedle Mum disappear down the ladder, and when you can hear them suiting up with the coats and the bags they’d discarded earlier, your rub Laura’s arm and say, “Still think you could use some warming up?”

But she’s holding that stupid glass jar, turning it over and over again in her hands. “This thing makes me nervous.”

You  _hate_  that the gingers have worn your patience so thin. “So we’ll get rid of it, then.”

“It’s not that,” she says, shaking her head. Her hair moves against your cheek as she does so, and you scooch a little closer to her. “It’s just - Perry said it was a kobold trap, right?” You give a noncommittal shrug. You didn’t pay the slightest attention to a thing that was said after the waffles were brought up…though you do find yourself wondering why Ms. “Be Normal” would know anything at all about kobolds. “Why would you have a kobold trap lying around unless there were  _kobolds_  lying around?”

“I promise you, Laura, there are no kobolds around. There’s nothing living here except for us,” you say, and really, of the two of you, you’re the one equipped with a predator’s hearing, sight, and smell. Your assurance does nothing to put her at ease, however, and she stands up.

“Perry said that kobolds are only dangerous if you insult them. But they’ll clean for you–”

“If you leave food out for them, yes,” you finish, and now you know why Ginger Twin Two would know about kobolds. She’s probably descended from one.

“So if we leave food out for them, they’ll clean for us and not eat us. Right?” She’s scanning the hayloft, oblivious to the hay sticking out of her hair. You sigh and stand as well, plucking the errant grass out and tossing it back in the pile with its brethren.

“You really want to leave a snack for a creature that’s not going to come by?” you ask, eyebrow raised. She ignores you, however, and starts rifling through the plastic bags the other two left behind. “Can’t it wait until after your friends come back?”

“Waffles! Duh,” she says, and pulls out a hunk of leftover waffle. She takes it and the plastic bag to the far corner of the loft, where she flattens the bag and sets the waffle atop it. You think she may finally be satisfied when she says, “A snack isn’t complete without a drink, though.”

You roll your eyes again, and it takes everything in you to swallow your exasperated groan. You have maybe ten minutes left before the Wonder Twins come back, and you’re certain that this will be the last alone time you and Laura will have for quite a while. And she wants to spend it feeding an imaginary gnome.

But whatever. The sooner this is finished, the better.

“Well, we’re all out of purple soda. But…I saw a barrel downstairs. It looks like whoever uses this place used it to collect rainwater,” you say, arms folded over your chest. “Would that be satisfactory?”

“Oh! Water, yes, that would be perfe–”

You don’t hear what else she has to say, because you’re already down the ladder. You return with a small pail full of the aforementioned water, and Laura blinks at you, mouth agape. So yeah. Not used to the superhuman speed yet.

“Satisfied?” you ask as you hand the bucket over. She smiles, slightly abashed, and sets it down beside the waffle. When she straightens you snake your arms around her waist and pull her back to your chest so you can rest your chin on her shoulder. “You know, I bet I’m  _much_  scarier than anything we’ll find out here.”

“Mmm, I don’t think so,” she says, but you can feel her cheek move as she smiles. “You don’t get  _really_  scary until you have bedhead.”

“Why do you think I steal your pillow so often?” you tease, pinching her hip in retaliation for her snark before pulling away. “It’s the only thing that stops my hair from snarling.”

“Guess you’re out of luck, then,” she answers, and turns to face you. Her hands find their way to your shoulders and she tips her head slightly to the side. As her hair shifts, you’re reminded of how incredibly inviting her jawline is. “I don’t think a bale of hay will help much.”

“Yeah, well. I’m not the one who had hay sticking out of my hair earlier.”

Laura bites her lip then, and you’re still staring at her mouth when she says, “Would you like to be?”

Your eyes dart to hers, and there’s a momentary panic there. “I-I mean - that was supposed to be–” You can see the ramble engines revving up. Her hands fidget nervously with your sweater. “I just thought, since we’re alone and all, and we probably won’t have much time–”

You press your mouth to hers because you don’t know that you could stand one more wasted second. It feels like an age since you were last able to kiss her properly - that you, a three-hundred year old vampire, have lived through an  _actual_  age incomparable to three weeks’ time is an irony not lost on you - and you intend to make up for every moment of searing frustration. Your hands find her hips, tug her closer; hers press to your neck, slide into your hair. She’s the first to push towards the haystack.

The pile doesn’t catch you as well as your dorm bed might, but it’s better than nothing. She doesn’t follow immediately, and leaves your hands desperately awaiting her warmth as she pauses to pull her sweater up over her head. She wears a button-down beneath that - and a tank top, and possibly thermal underwear - but the motion makes your mouth run dry anyway. Then she’s kneeling, one knee on either side of your leg, and leaning forward. She balances herself against your hip with one hand, and the other traces your jaw on its way to your hair. When her mouth meets yours, it’s like coming up for air.

You have no idea how experienced Laura is - her romantic history isn’t exactly something you’ve had time to go into detail about - but the three-hundred-plus years’ expertise she lacks is made up for in enthusiasm. You’re left gasping in moments, one hand sliding into the back pocket of her jeans and pressing her hips against yours. The other tries desperately to untuck her layered shirts. As much as you’ve loved the comeback of the high-waisted jeans, they have always been  _most_  inconducive to touching.

It’s when the shirts come free that you feel her hesitate, and you pull away to meet her eyes. Your hand stops, settled atop her jeans, and you withdraw the other from her pocket to brush her hair back behind her ear. “Is this okay?” you ask in a breathless whisper, watching her eyes, her expression. She looks back at you for a hesitant moment, and then surges forward to press her mouth to yours again. You get out a muffled “Laura!” before she actually answers you.

“It’s more than okay,” she says, and there’s a chuckle in her voice. You grin before leaning forward to catch her lips again, and your fingers slip beneath the gap in her clothing.

You behave yourself from there, for the most part. Content just to feel the warmth and softness of her skin, your fingers stick mainly to her side and her lower back, skirting back and forth as the moment takes you. Her hands have found their way under your sweater but no further beneath. Her touch up and down your sides raises goosebumps on your skin anyway.

And then she shifts. It’s an accidental thing - just readjusting how she’s balanced - but with her all but laying atop you, her thigh presses deep between yours. A surprised gasp escapes you and your body stiffens, your fingers tensing on her hips. Laura, whose face is pressed to your neck, pauses a moment, and you think she’s taking note. And then her hips give a hesitant, experimental grind.

If you weren’t breathless before, you are now.

You bite down on your lip to hold the yearning sound that threatens at bay, but the way your breath escapes you betrays you. You can feel her smile against your throat, and you imagine that it’s a devilish little thing, because her hips move again a moment later. Your head falls back against the hay and you breathe out an aching, “ _Laura…_ ”

“Now, I know the hay is still a bit of a fire hazard, so LaFontaine and I were–ohJimminyCricket!”

You tense for a whole other reason at the sound of that voice.

You have to tell yourself how breakable Laura’s hipbone is to remind yourself that she isn’t a stressball.

 _Because the gingers have returned_.

“What, are they making out or somethi--?” Asshole One’s head pops above the lip of the hole just as Laura is scurrying off you, and they seem honestly surprised when their hypothesis is proven correct. “Oh, jeeze, guys, I’m - uh.” Their head, as Asshole Two’s must have moments ago, drops back beneath the floorboards.

“I should have locked the door,” you growl under your breath. Laura laughs breathlessly despite her red face, and leans over to kiss your cheek.

“There will be other times,” she promises against your skin, and you hope for all the world that she’s right. Because if she isn’t, you will take every necessary measure to ensure that the Ginger Twins are slowly and  _painfully_ eviscerated.

Laura must see the violence you’re imagining behind your eyes, because some sort of realization dawns on her face as she sits back.

“I’ll - I’m just going to see what they’ve found,” she says, and scrambles down the ladder. You sigh, close your eyes, lay your head back, and will yourself to calm down. In more ways than one.

A little while later, you and the others have managed to haul a wheelbarrow and a steel tub up into the hayloft, a corner of which has been swept clear of the incredibly flammable material (a few pieces of which you have, as Laura promised, picked out of your hair) for safety reasons. The loft, enclosed the way it is, is the easiest place to heat, Bill Nye decides. So despite the close quarters with the hay, you rig the wheelbarrow and tub into a kind of fireplace using the rope Laura had found earlier, then use the pitchfork to carve a chink in the ceiling for the smoke to escape. Laura, whose survivalist training apparently didn’t stop with bear mace and krav maga, sets a few of the sticks and the one log-sized chunk of wood the Wonder Twins managed to find alight. The arrangement, she says, will hopefully be enough to slow burn through the night.

“I will miss the haybale, though,” she says a little plaintively as she looks at the budding fire. “It was pretty comfortable, all things considered.”

You’ve all dressed in your layers again, coats and all, to keep warm. They’ll do little to provide for a comfortable sleep on these bare floorboards.

Without a word you get up and go to a darkened corner of the hayloft, where the mountains of the stuff had been piled away, and begin to strip down.

“Carm?” Laura asks, and the note of curiosity in her voice ensures you that the firelight has made them blind to your dark corner. Which is good. Not that you’re shy - you’ve changed in front of all of them at least three times since you’ve met - but there are some things you don’t think your girlfriend is ready to see just yet.

You shifting into a giant black panther is one of them.

There’s an audible gasp when you slink back out from the shadow, and you shoot a look at the Wonder Twins as though  _daring_  them to say anything. LaFontaine gets the memo pretty quick and drops their eyes, but Ms. “Be Normal” is still gaping when you paw up to where Laura is sitting.

The last time you were this close to her when you looked like this was when you were yanking her back from the Pit of Doom, and she looks a little nervous and uncertain. Unable to speak, you give her a reassuring little bump with your nose, then curl up around her. With her back against your long side, you settle your head atop your paws beside her thigh.

“Oh,” she breathes, realization dawning - and then she laughs, no doubt catching sight of an eyeroll that is so unmistakably yours that there’s little question that you’re still hiding behind that fur. You’ve all already discussed that body heat will be essential, but you think you’ll be far more comfortable to huddle against this way than if you still looked like yourself. Having gotten the message, Laura slides down until her head and upper back are resting against your side.

“So…goodnight, then?” Wonder Twin One says, and lays down at Laura’s feet. Wonder Twin Two follows shortly thereafter…and then you feel Laura’s fingers scratching gently behind your ear.

“Goodnight.”


End file.
